SRIHARIKOTA: In its longest ever mission spread over two hours, India’s workhorse launch vehicle PSLV on Monday successfully launched eight satellites, including the country’s SCATSAT-1 and five satellites from other nations, in two different orbits to achieve another milestone.
There were two Fourth Stage Engine restarts for the purpose of injecting the satellites into different orbits.
SCATSAT-1, the 371 kg primary satellite, was first injected in a 730 km Polar Sunsynchronous Orbit (SSO) after 17-odd minutes after the 44.4 metre tall PSLV-C35 lifted off at 9.12 AM from the spaceport in Sriharikota.
The rocket then achieved with precision the designated task of injecting the other satellites after over 2 hours and 15 minutes, in a lower polar orbit of 689 km.
The total weight of the payloads carried by PSLV in its 15th flight in ‘XL’ configuration was about 675 kg.
Besides SCATSAT-1, the other satellites which were injected in orbit were two Indian university satellites, PRATHAM and PISAT, three from Algeria— ALSAT-1B, ALSAT-2B and ALSAT-1N and one each from the US and Canada—Pathfinder-1 and NLS-19, respectively.
ISRO said the SCATSAT-1 is a continuity mission for Oceansat-2 scatterometer to provide wind vector data products for weather forecasting, cyclone detection and tracking services to the users. The satellite carries Ku-band scatterometer which is similar to the one put onboard the Oceansat-2. The mission life of the satellite is five years.
ISRO Chairman A S Kiran Kumar congratulated the scientists and described the achievement as a landmark saying data from SCATSAT would be made available within 180 minutes. “We have been able to achieve a launch of eight satelites… our own Scatterometer which is a stop-gap arrangement between Oceansat-1 and Oceansat 2. This is a satellite which is going to provide ocean wind vectors to the global community for numeric weather forecasting model.”, he said.
Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre Director, K Sivan said, “This mission is an exciting mission, an excellent mission. It is a longest mission with a lowest dispersion. We got the orbital dispersion from less than one kilometre. It is unbelievable.”
Commenting on future launches by ISRO, he said, “We have historic GSLV Mark III mission we are planning for year end. Like that, exciting days are ahead.”
“This was the longest mission of PSLV. It is 2 hours 15 minutes but in the shortest campaign (process of integrating launch vehicle) in just 35 days. And this is for the first time two launches have taken place from Sriharikota in the same month,” he said.
The two academic satellites are PRATHAM, from IIT, Bombay, and PISAT, from BES University, Bengaluru and its consortium. hile PRATHAM’s objective is to estimate Total Electron Count, PISAT’s mission is to design and develop a nanosatellite for remote sensing applications.
Algeria’s ALSAT-1B is an earth observation satellite meant for monitoring agriculture, environment and disasters, ALSAT-2B is a rmote sensing satellite while ALSAT-1N is a technology demonstration satellite built for students. Pathfinder-1 from USA is a commercial high resolution imaging microsatellite while the Candadian NLS-19 (CAN X-7) is again a technology demonstration satellite built to perform experiments to help reduce space debris and for tracking commercial aircraft. (PTI)
